Was it really a conspiracy?

Perhaps it’s because I’m in the reputation protection business, and maybe I’m stepping in front of a proverbial train, but it seems to me that before we race to remove statues, erase murals and rewrite the obituary of Joe Paterno, we ought to ease off the throttle just a bit.

AP Photo/Pat Little

To be sure, he and the other former Penn State administrators — Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz — committed a major, inexcusable blunder in not reporting to law enforcement or child welfare officials on Jerry Sandusky following the infamous shower incident in 2001.

Moreover, it’s hard to lament the consequences they have suffered as a result. Had they reported Sandusky to the proper authorities, three additional boys might have avoided becoming victims of a serial sexual predator.

But characterizing their malfeasance as “a conspiracy to conceal,” “a culture of secrecy” and “total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims” implies a level of malevolence that is not supported by the facts in the Freeh report.

The Sandusky scandal is disgusting. People want answers, and they want them quickly. They also want those answers to be black and white.

They almost never are.

In crafting a solution that avoided reporting Sandusky to police or child welfare authorities, were Paterno and the others considering the Penn State “brand” and the consequences of bad publicity? Probably. The evidence also shows that they wanted to force Sandusky to seek counseling and inform his charity, The Second Mile, of the shower room incident.

Was their plan truly a black-and-white case of knowingly putting the brand ahead of the welfare of kids or was it a half-baked, ill-advised solution concocted by four people who were in far over their heads in terms of understanding the nature of pedophilia and sexual predators?

In the crisis communications business, it’s useful to remember the advice of William of Ockham, the 14th-century theologian who said one should stick with the simplest explanation of phenomena until evidence suggests otherwise. It’s not hard to imagine four guys trying to devise the least painful way to solve a problem. It’s not hard to imagine that they believed they could do it without violating any laws. And it’s not hard to imagine that they failed to consider all of the ramifications and possible outcomes.

What they should have been thinking about was Murphy’s law, which says, restated liberally, “If it can go wrong, it will.”

That’s the law that keeps crisis communications consultants in business.

Like most organizations, Penn State has a sizable human resources function, presumably staffed by people who have considerably more expertise in sexual misconduct than most football coaches or university presidents. In this case, the administrators developed the plan on their own. The report recommends that the university centralize its HR function and “limit the ability of individual departments and campuses to disregard the university’s human resources policies and rules.”

This and other high-profile child molestation cases have raised the public’s awareness above what it was in 2001. Also helping has been the work of people such as Kenneth V. Lanning, a retired FBI profiler who wrote “Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis,” described as an investigative tool for law-enforcement officers and child-protection professionals.

(It’s an excellent resource for parents as well. The publication is available from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, www.missingkids.com.)

Lanning’s insight was considered revelatory. In its fourth edition — published the same year as the showering incident — he wrote:

“The myth of the typical child molester as the dirty old man in the wrinkled raincoat has been re-evaluated based on what we have learned about the kinds of people who sexually victimize children. The fact is child molesters can look like anyone else and even be someone we know and like.”

We know that now.

There is no excuse for the failure of Paterno and the others to act in a manner that could have prevented additional boys from becoming victims. Paterno himself said as much. He is no longer here to defend himself, and while the episode certainly stains his legacy, his accomplishments and contributions to many of the best things about collegiate competition cannot be denied.

Perhaps the criminal prosecution of Curley and Schultz, and possibly Spanier, will shed additional light on this matter. But until there is evidence to the contrary, the idea that it was merely the product of bad judgment is at least as plausible as the black-and-white notion of a conspiracy to protect the best interests of the university to the detriment of children.

Rick Kelly directs the Crisis Communications Practice at Triad Strategies LLC in Harrisburg. He has no direct or indirect connection with Penn State.